Chain Letters

Got another one tonight, I really hate these. And they're usually from friends. Couldn't we all use a little good luck? Thought this might make you smile! This is one of the nicer ones - keep the chain going!
Load.
Of.
Crap.
And I'm talking about the ones with the ominous tone here, make not mistake. Not the jokes and mass 'to all' friendlies. I kind of like those. But the ones that are a thin veneer of hope wrapped around a brick? First of all, if you believe that by forwarding the email that good things will happen to you, then somewhere in your reptilian brain you also believe that bad things will happen if you don't. And that if the person you send it to - usually a friend - doesn't forward it then bad things will happen to them. Why would anyone forward these? The fear of a celestial spanking? Shouldn't that fear just make you nicer to people, and not make you compelled to send threats - even April fresh cuddly coated threats - to your friends? Is it the greed, the possible thought that doing something so slack as to hit 'send' will result in untold and unearned riches? Is the universe really that fickle and corrupt? If so, I want off.
The used to be paper, these things. You had to have someone's mailing address, and a stamp, and before there was a copy machine at every convenience store, you had to copy them out by hand. I saw my mom do this as I was growing up. I saw her sweat. And one night, when we didn't have any stamps or money for them, I saw her cry. She actually believed that not sending the letters she, with arthritic hands no less, had painstakingly copied out one at a time within the 72 hour deadline, that her luck would get worse. That she would have less than no money, be more lonely, have more holes in her house...I don't know. I looked around at the govt housing we were in, thought of the cheerful solitary jello in the fridge...and hated anyone who'd ever send anyone a chain letter. I recognized the incoming handwriting as one of her few friends. She wouldn't believe me that the power the letters had was what you gave them, being a deeply superstitious woman. I was nine, and desperate to comfort her, so I told her that you didn't need postage to send letters to Canadian govt officials, and why didn't she send them to the Minsister of Defence, her MP, the Prime Minister and so forth. Okay, that part was a proud moment as she brightened and we began hunting down addresses.
But every time I get a chain email, I think of the moment before the clarity, when she was a single mum and superstitious, and unable to avoid a jinx set on her by a friend. And I get angry again, this time at my friend. I'm happy to get news, jokes, stories - besides and beyond my belief system even - but threats, the fake happy forwards with the cautionary ending if you don't OBEY? A pox on the lot of them, I say, even if they turn around three times and spit.